Complaint filed against Harvard’s primate center

An organization that opposes animal research yesterday filed a federal complaint asking the federal government to revoke funding for a study at Harvard’s New England Primate Research Center in Southborough following the recent death of a test monkey. The study was poorly designed and should never have been approved b...

By Brad Petrishen/Daily News staff

MetroWest Daily News, Framingham, MA

By Brad Petrishen/Daily News staff

Posted May. 4, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 4, 2012 at 4:04 AM

By Brad Petrishen/Daily News staff

Posted May. 4, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated May 4, 2012 at 4:04 AM

SOUTHBOROUGH

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An organization that opposes animal research yesterday filed a federal complaint asking the federal government to revoke funding for a study at Harvard’s New England Primate Research Center in Southborough following the recent death of a test monkey.

The study was poorly designed and should never have been approved by either the federal government or the school, says the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a large nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. that promotes a vegan lifestyle and opposes animal testing.

In a complaint to the U.S. Health and Human Services inspector general filed by Committee Director of Academic Affairs and Harvard graduate Dr. John J. Pippin, the organization said it has obtained “disturbing” new information about an October 2011 death at the center through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture cited Harvard after a monkey was found dead in its cage following an “imaging procedure” in October.

Four monkeys have died at the center in the last two years, and the USDA is currently investigating all the deaths to see if fines are warranted. Agency spokesman Dave Sacks said yesterday that investigation is still ongoing and could take some time since the scope is broad.

The last three inspections of the facility have been clean, he said.

The monkey that died in October — which federal grant reports show to be a small monkey native to South America called a marmoset — expired sometime during the imaging procedure, although the USDA report isn’t clear on when.

It escaped and was captured with a net before the procedure, underwent the procedure and was later noticed dead in its cage, the USDA said.

In a Nov. 29 letter to the National Institutes of Health obtained by the Physicians Committee, Harvard’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee — charged with approving and monitoring animal research — said the monkey had been scanned with an EchoMRI machine.

According to its website, the trademarked EchoMRI system provides precise body composition measurements in about a minute without the need for anesthesia or sedation and is “exceedingly easy to operate,” with training taking one hour.

The image on the site shows a marmoset inside of a small tube that is used for the MRI.

Pippin said the tubes are barely larger than the animal’s body, and pointed to sections of the Harvard letter he believes suggest the animal may have died while struggling to stay out or get out of the tube.

The Harvard letter states that the animal care board directed the researcher to “explore the possibility of obtaining different sized tubes … to accommodate different sized animals” as well as to explore whether a neck brace should be used to hold the animal’s head in place inside the tube.

Page 2 of 2 - It also directed the researcher to develop “a contingency plan to address issues arising when an animal either escapes from its cage or appears to struggle in the tube.”

Titled “A metabolic model of aging in the common marmoset,” the study’s abstract states that its purpose is to develop the short-lived marmoset into a new model to better understand the biology of aging in humans and primates.

“The acquired knowledge has the potential to explain causes of variation in traits of aging within individuals and also differences in aging among individuals in human populations,” wrote the lead researcher, Dean Paul Jones of Emory University.

The letter states that the research project — which federal reports show was funded at $502,984 in fiscal 2011 and $526,923 in fiscal 2010 by the National Institute on Aging — was halted following the death. It’s unclear whether the research has resumed. Harvard suspended all new experiments at the center in late February following news of the facility’s fourth death.

In a statement yesterday, Harvard said it is committed to ensuring the important, life-saving research conducted at the center is done in an ethical manner.

“Harvard Medical School cares deeply about this issue and is aggressively implementing systems and procedures that are strengthening oversight of animal care at the (center) to help ensure that we achieve the highest standards possible.”

Pippin — a one-time animal researcher — said this type of research is “useless” because there is no evidence showing that aging in marmosets has any bearing on aging in humans.

Furthermore, the recommendations of Harvard’s animal care committee were so extensive, Pippin said, as to indicate that the research protocol was severely flawed and shouldn’t have been approved by either the school or the federal government.

“This kind of waste should never be tolerated, and in our country’s current financial climate, this careless spending is irresponsible,” Pippin wrote, calling for the Inspector General to investigate the death for “waste, fraud and abuse” and revoke funding for the study from the school.

According to government records, the study is slated to run until 2015, and the grant is issued in the name of Emory University. The research was being conducted at the Primate Center.

The National Institutes of Health yesterday afternoon said it couldn’t immediately comment on Pippin’s complaint. An Inspector General spokeswoman said details regarding the complaint’s status were not yet available.

(Brad Petrishen can be reached at 508-490-7463 or bpetrishen@wickedlocal.com. For Southborough news throughout the day, follow him at twitter.com/Brad_Petrishen.)